New light on the primitive rabbinic calendars: JTS ENA 1745

Abstract

Cairo Genizah fragment JTS ENA 1745 sheds new light on the primitive rabbinic calendars, tentatively dated to the eighth century, which have been recently identified and analysed on the basis of T-S K 2.27 ( JJS 67:1, 2016, pp. 68–90). The text of ENA 1745 is in Hebrew, rather than Aramaic, and perhaps a partial translation of the Aramaic version in T-S K 2.27. One of its calendars, unlike the Aramaic version, is sufficiently accurate for Jews to have been able to use it in practice before the institution of the standard rabbinic calendar in the ninth century.